Recently in Space Category

You may be familiar with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project which is attempting to find radio signal evidence of other intelligent life in the universe. One of the most important aspects of SETI's work is its SETI@home project, which allows personal computer users to donate unused computer time to the project. By installing software on your computer, you enable SETI to send it signal-processing work that is critical to SETI's mission. When your computer finishes processing a set of signals, it transmits the completed work back to the servers at the SETI project's headquarters.

SETI is operated and supported by Sir Arthur C. Clarke (author of 2001:  A Space Odyssey and many other books). It is run as a project of the University of California at Berkeley. The project previously got much of its funding from the private sector, mostly from companies who believed in its mission and got a bit of marketing leverage from supporting it. Many of the companies that were SETI's big supporters have, unfortunately, stopped sponsoring the project's work. It's very much in danger of having its plug pulled by UC  Berkeley.   To prevent that from happening, SETI  needs your help and support.

To donate to the SETI@home project, visit the UC  Berkeley donation site at this address:

https://colt.berkeley.edu/urelgift/seti.html

You can donate by credit card and the minimum donation is only $25, something most of us can afford.   The above address provides a secure method for donating by credit card.

Even if you don't believe in the work SETI is doing and you think that searching for life elsewhere in the universe is silly, you might want to consider donating to the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (or "BOINC"). This project (which was initiated by the SETI@home effort), in addition to assisting with SETI@home's data processing needs, also supports a variety of other distributed computing projects that are attempting to answer important scientific questions and find cures for various diseases.

While vacationing in Arizona, my family visited the Meteor Crater located between Flagstaff and Winslow.  This was a day trip we took away from the Grand Canyon.  Meteor Crater is the site where, scientists estimate, a 150-foot meteor struck the Earth approximately 50,000 years ago.

During my visit, I took many pictures of the crater, visitor center, and museum.  Some of these are provided below to satisfy some of your curiousity about the site and perhaps motivate you to consider visiting it.  It will only take 2-3 hours to view the crater, enjoy the museum, watch the 10-minute documentary movie, look at the astronaut wall of fame, check out the Apollo capsule, and browse the gift shop, but it will be worthwhile.

Personally, I learned a good bit about meteors from my visit, marveled at the size of the crater (which is immense), and even found some very reasonably priced items in the gift shop to bring home (items I'd seen offered at much higher prices in other shops in the Grand Canyon area).

If you are a fan of the space program, as I am, you probably wonder from time to time what is happening on the Shuttle, the International Space Station, or at Mission Control.  Fortunately, NASA makes that very easy to do. 

In about the middle of this page, NASA provides RealPlayer-compatible feeds of its NASA TV station via the Internet.  As I type this, I'm watching a live feed from the Shuttle and Mission Control is a few minutes away from waking up the crew to check in with them.

Just prior to this I watched a press conference with a NASA executive regarding the recently discovered failure of a thermal blanket in the nose of the Orbiter. 

NASA's Deep Impact probe successfully collided with a comet, in a move the NASA scientists describe as the equivalent of "hitting a bullet with another bullet while positioning a third bullet to be in place to watch the impact".  Sadly, this monumental bit of engineering and calculation got only passing mention in the media compared to a local scandal involving a man accused with soliciting a 14-year-old for sex...

For information about the Deep Impact probe, visit NASA's official page on the subject:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/deepimpact/main/index.html?skipIntro=1

For some additional images of the comet and the probe's impact with it, see:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/05/sci_nat_deep_impact0_a_mission_to_crash_into_a_comet/html/1.stm

Congratulations on a job well done, NASA!  Best of luck with the Rosetta spacecraft (due to do the same thing in the year 2014).